Hypothesis Wrecking and the Diagonal Problem. We've been doing more problems lately where students can gather data and look for patterns. Today's installment is via the Diagonal Problem which I think I first saw via Kate. I'm noticing that more kids are gaining confidence in looking for patterns, forming hypotheses and then seeing if they can make the hypothesis fail. The phrase that seems to be gaining ground when it comes to hypothesis testing is "wreck it"-as in "Oh, you think you have a rule?
See if you can wreck it. " This diagonal problem is nice because a lot of students seem to zero in on special cases. I've put together a flow chart that seems to be helpful. Some students get caught in the Do research-->do you see a pattern? There are a lot of mistakes being made. There's learning. On cold calling | Quantum Progress. I can still remember the third quarter calculus course I took my senior year of high school. The professor had developed this teaching style of continuously cold calling on students to work through problems he wrote on the board. He’s start off a lecture by writing an integral on the board, and then methodically start calling on students: “What is the next step in this problem, Mr.
Smith?” He’d ask, and if that student didn’t know, he’d casually switch over to someone else, “Well, perhaps Ms. He did this so frequently that even in a class of 25, you were basically guaranteed to get called on at least twice. Last night, Bowman Dickson gave an awesome presentation on developing conceptual understanding before introducing mathematical formalism to the Global Math Department *.
This totally got to reconsider about a practice I’d previously written off. . * Incidentally, the GMD has been on a tear with some incredible presentations lately. Like this: Like Loading... Matched Pairs with Hallway Bowling | mathcoachblog. The experimental design unit in AP Statistics is a fun one, with lots of opportunities to design activities, discuss possibilities and collect data. For a few years, a “Hallway Bowling” activity I created has been one of my favorites for discussing matched-pairs experiments.
This year, I added a new wrinkle to this activity day, in order to economize class time. As students entered the class, they drew a playing card, each having one of three suits which determined their group assignment for the day. Each group had 7 or 8 students. Groups then rotated through 3 stations, with 15 minutes on the clock, and with each activity designed to review a different aspect of the chapter. In Station 1, students met with me in a small group, where we discussed experimental design, writing ideas and experiment trees on desks. In Station 2, the group completed an actual AP item dealing with experimental design. You can down loading the rules here: Hallway Bowling Here’s how Bowling works.
Like this: A Day in The MTBoS Life | mathcoachblog. This week’s assignment in the 8-week Explore the MathTwitterBlogosphere project is to provide “A Day in The Life” of a math teacher. It’s Monday morning, and here is my day…. It’s 6:30AM, and I’ve just arrived at my desk. I’ve always been an early-riser; I don’t like feeling stressed in the morning so it’s always been custom for me to be in my classroom well before kids start rolling in at 7:20. Weekend e-mails include a student seeking guidance on entering the PA Statistics Poster competition, an update on the Math Madness competition for our math club, and a few items from my local math teacher group, ATMOPAV. Today in Algebra 2, we will be doing a test review for an exam on exponential and logarithmic functions. Thanks to the great site Problem Attic, I was able to quickly assemble an assortment of review items for hanging around the room.
We have block scheduling here. 7:30, Homeroom – such a strange time of the day. Time passes…nice walk…dinner…Monday Night Football and…. Like this: Shuffle Quiz. We're in the midst of CST prep. I am bored. CST review is this weird game of picking out specific skills/topics not because they're important so much as they can be quickly recalled and practiced back to fluency. Right now I'm leaning heavily on shuffle quizzes for my skills practice. The basic idea is the students get a set of problems and work on them together. At spaced intervals a group member raises his/her hand and I come over. I take their papers and shuffle them up. Whoever gets their paper pulled gets asked the questions for the group. The only thing I did differently in these examples is that instead of everyone working the same problem, each member in a group of four was assigned a specific problem. Some use notes: These questions are pretty plain vanilla to emulate the glory of the CST but I've used this strategy for more interesting questions.
Here are some sample pics: Notes: Graph A is the top right from this angle, Graph B is the top left, and Graph C is the bottom right.